PepsiCowhich faced a consumer backlash after it pulled aspartame from Diet Pepsi in 2015is making a full reversal and will once again use the controversial sweetner in the soda's mainstream variety.

The brand yanked aspartame in mid-2015, replacing it with with sucralose and acesulfame potassium, known as Ace-K. But the move backfired as loyalists clamored for the original formula. So in 2016, the brand brought back the aspartame versionbut only in limited quantities marketed as "classic sweetener blend." It kept the aspartame-free version as its mainstream variety. But now Diet Pepsi is making the aspartame version its main variety again as part of a marketing revamp.

Beverage Digest first reported the news on Friday. A PepsiCo spokeswoman confirmed the switch to Ad Age but did not comment further. The move sets up a new chapter in the cola wars with Diet Pepsi's overhaul going head-to-head with Diet Coke, which has also undergone big changes.

The first U.S. commercial ride-hailing service without human drivers has been approved.

Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc., got a permit in late January from the Arizona Department of Transportation to operate as a Transportation Network Company, according to Ryan Harding, a spokesman at the state agency.

The designation lets Waymo's fleet of driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans pick up and drop off paying riders in Arizona through a smartphone app or website, the spokesman said on Friday. Uber Technologies and Lyft are good examples of transportation network companies in the state, Harding added.

Facebook, Alphabet Inc.'s Google and other online platforms would face stricter rules for political advertising according to a proposed framework that will be considered by the Federal Election Commission.

The proposal, written by Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat and vice chair of the commission, would require online advertisements to carry the same disclaimers from their sponsors as do radio, TV and print ads. The commission will consider the framework, known as a notice of proposed rule making, at its next public hearing on March 8.

The move comes as tech companies face growing scrutiny in Washington ranging from concerns about market dominance to concerns that online platforms are used for sex trafficking of children.

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller unveiled the details of an allegedly widespread and coordinated campaign by Russians to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, delivering on his initial mandate by the Justice Department.

In an indictment announced Friday in Washington, Mueller describes a years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump. Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities and accused them of defrauding the U.S. government by interfering with the political process.

Those involved spent some $1.25 million per month on ad campaigns and measured their efforts much as an ad agency would, according to the indictment. It says the group kept track of metrics like views and comments, and measured engagement.

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than seven million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time yesterday.

A few highlights: In a high-energy spot, Subway says "Make it what you want"whether it's hot or cold or fresh or epic or fun or whatever (they're talking about life and sandwiches). Groupon serves up another of its ads starring sassy spokesperson Tiffany Haddish. And Toyota presents a beautifully filmed short narrative about a young boy living in a small Italian town who aspires to be a world-class cyclist; it's part of Toyota's ongoing "Start your impossible" campaign.

Happy Friday, and Happy Chinese New Year! Valentine's Day is out of the way and all of the boxes of chocolate, flowers and sappy social media posts are behind us, which means the next big occasion to anxiously await is Ad Age's annual Agency A-List, due out Sunday night.

Before we head into the long weekend for President's Day, let's see what happened in agency news.

Amazon, YouTube and Twitter are all weighing bids for streaming rights to "Thursday Night Football," according to people with knowledge of the matter, providing the latest evidence of technology companies' growing interest in live sports.

The three are bidding as much as hundreds of millions of dollars for rights that will run for as long as five years, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the negotiations. The NFL is getting help in the talks from 21st Century Fox, which acquired the TV rights to the games through 2022.

The NFL is looking for a tech company to offer an interactive stream with social-media commentary and statistics that entice kids raised on video games and Snapchat, the people said. Amazon already does this with the G League, a minor-league version of the NBA. The TV audience for the NFL has declined for two years in a row, slumping almost 10 percent last season alone.

Walmart is introducing low-cost clothing brands for women, kids and plus-size customers, aiming to lure shoppers as Amazon gobbles up more apparel sales.

The store brands include Time and Tru in ladieswearwhich will replace the jettisoned DanskinNow labelalong with Terra & Sky in plus-size apparel and Wonder Nation for kids, according to a company presentation to suppliers obtained by Bloomberg News. The George apparel brand, which Walmart brought over from its British unit Asda, will be refocused for men only. The new brands will replace older ones such as Faded Glory, White Stag and Just My Size.

The retailer is "launching new brands, not labels," according to one of the slides presented at the meeting, which took place at the retailer's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, in late January. "We will cover every aspect of fashion."

Red Stripe has stepped into to save the Jamaican bobsled team at the Olympics. The beer, which is brewed in the nation's capital of Kingston, covered the cost of the women's team's sled at the last minute after its coach quit and apparently threatened to take the sled with her, the brand says.

The coach, Sandra Kiriasis of Germany, quit the team after refusing to change roles from driving coach to "track performance analyst," according to a report Wednesday by the BBC. Kiriasis claims she was forced out and is legally responsible for the sled, the BBC reported. Red Stripe, which is distributed in the U.S. by Heineken USA, seized on the situation with a tweet on Thursday. The Jamaican team took the brew up on its offer.

Welcome to Ad Age's Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital-related news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for "Ad Age" under "Skills" in the Alexa app.

What people are talking about today

The deadliest-ever mass shooting at an American high school (with the death toll exceeding 1999's Columbine massacre) happened this week, but the story doesn't make the cover of the new issue of Time magazine, out today. The tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida happened relatively late in Time's production cyclethe school first went into lockdown at 2:40 p.m. ET on Wednesdayand while Time.com and Time's social channels have been intensively reporting on the tragedy, the print magazine's cover, a healthy-living service package"How to Live Longer Better"will make a lot of people flinch given the timing. See the cover here.

Like the proverbial group of blind men trying to identify an elephant by touching random parts of its bodyit's a tree! it's a snake! it's a spear!getting an informed read on the NFL's ongoing ratings slide has been an exercise in highly subjective interpretation. Ask 20 fans why they believe the league's popularity is on the wane, and like the sightless gropers of the metaphorical pachyderm, you'll get 20 responses, ranging from the political (players taking a knee during the anthem) to the pragmatic (the specter of repetitive brain trauma has made watching football an indefensible indulgence).

In the interest of trying to get at the heart of what's actually driving the ratings erosionand whether it's beginning to impact the advertisers that buy time in and around the gamesHorizon Media earlier this winter began an investigation into the matter. The results of the agency's multifaceted study are in, and while the NFL and its network partners may not find the data terribly reassuring, the good news is that many of the factors that have alienated fans appear to be remediable.

According to Horizon Media Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Hall, the results of the agency's study suggest that the recent disenchantment with the NFL may have less to do with the oft-repeated canard about politics and more to do with how the league itself is run.

A new cartoon from TBS called "Final Space" is going after "Rick and Morty" fans with a livestream premiere on Reddit.

TBS is running an ad campaign on Reddit to give viewers an early look at the animated sci-fi show two weeks before it debuts on TV. It's the first time a TV show will stream on Reddit, a site with thousands of fandoms and user-generated communities, adding up to more than 50 million monthly U.S. visitors, according to ComScore.

TBS could have streamed "Final Space," created by Olan Rogers, on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, but Reddit users are known aficionados of cartoons and science fiction. TBS's sibling network Cartoon Network has cultivated a rabid following for its own hit sci-fi animated series "Rick and Morty," which has a community of 750,000 fans on Reddit.

CBS Corp. overcame a slump in TV advertising to report higher sales and profit in the final quarter of 2017, buoyed by offering programs to online providers such as Netflix and attracting subscribers to its own All Access service with shows like "Star Trek: Discovery."

CBS boosted sales from licensing programs by 33 percent and subscription fees by 20 percent, according to a statement Thursday. The company said its two paid streaming services have reached almost 5 million subscribers.

CEO Leslie Moonves is trying to sustain momentum at the company he has led for more than a decade while his board explores a merger with Viacom, which like CBS is controlled by the Redstone family. Viacom owns cable networks including MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as the Paramount Pictures studio.

If "Wonder Woman" proved filmgoers of all ages and genders would go see a female superhero flick, Marvel's "Black Panther" is poised to do the same with an African-American protagonist in a supersuit.

The film could generate about $205 million in its debut over the extended President's Day weekend in the U.S., according to Box Office Pro, which raised its projection on Thursday by almost $24 million. Marvel parent Walt Disney Co. is predicting $150 million, still enough to ensure "Black Panther" will be among the top-grossing domestic releases of the year.

AMC Entertainment Holdings, the biggest U.S. exhibitor, has recorded more advance sales for "Black Panther" than any other Marvel Studios title "by a significant margin," according to Elizabeth Frank, chief content and programming officer for the company. More than 100 of the chain's 650 theaters are seeing record reservations.

Jordan Hoffner, CEO of Salon Media Group, is not surprised at the attention his site is suddenly getting.

Salon is likely the first publisher to ask users running ad blockers to either turn them off or make up for it by letting Salon use their computers' processing power to mine cryptocurrency in the background. The Financial Times (which has itself gotten creative with readers who run ad blockers) reported the news on Monday. The media world turned its head.

"Being a journalist, I knew it was going to be a big story," Hoffner says. "But that's not why we did it. We have a profound problem in the industryad blockingand this was one way to bring light to it."

Others were also pleased. McDonald's nutritional changes are "a welcome next step," Margo Wootan, VP for nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement, adding that other chains should follow its lead.

But Alexa Kaczmarski, national campaign organizer for the group Corporate Accountability, lashed out at the announcement.

"This is more of the same. Old tricks from an old dog," Kaczmarski said in a statement, calling Happy Meals "vehicles for hooking kids on junk food and building brand affinity for life."

Chinese New Year, which starts Friday, has become a time for marketers to make ads about the importance of family and coming home for the holidays. But brands from Budweiser to Lay's this year are developing a sub-theme about the love and tension that co-exists in the relationship between young adults and their parents.

It's a global reality, but the gap between generations is arguably bigger in China than other places. Most Chinese millennials grew up at a time of strong economic growth, when people were trying new products, traveling to new places and thinking more about their desires as individuals. Many of their parents were born before the boom years, before China even opened up to the outside world. (Foreign products and brands were scarce on the mainland until the 1980s.) And China's one-child policy may have made parent-child relationships more intense; authorities began allowing married couples two children in 2016.

Here's a few brands with a statement to make about the parents and their children.

The Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine has hired Terri & Sandy as its first agency of record to help the clinical network shift cultural conversations around fertility treatments.

"We want to make it comfortable to talk about at any stage of your life," says Constance Rapson, chief marketing officer at the center, which is known as CCRM. "The whole adage of 'Having it all' is transforming, and wanting to have a baby at any stage of your life should be part of having it all."

CCRM decided to begin its first consumer brand campaign because it now has 10 facilities around the country and the multibillion dollar fertility industry is growing rapidly, Rapson says.

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than seven million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time yesterday.

A few highlights: Tide serves up a special Valentine's Day-themed ad that seems like it's not a Tide aduntil it suddenly is a Tide ad. (See Jack Neff's Feb. 4 post, "Tide is Everywhere With Campaign to Own All Super Bowl Ads," for background on Tide's wry new bait-and-switch approach.) PetSmart wants you to "adopt love" by adopting a pet during its National Adoption Weekend Event, Feb. 16-18. And the NBA enlists Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving to help celebrate the Chinese New Year.

In the wake of the latest American school shooting, the New York Daily News front page this morning declares "THIS IS US" over an image of a gun pointed directly at its readers.

Inside the paper, an op-ed by the paper's editorial board is headlined "All-American shame: As a nation, we do not care." It reads, in part:

Mourn though we do, mourn though we must, it is time to admit a painful fact: As a nation, we do not care. If we cared, we would make at least an honest effort to fight the corrosive culture of violence that infects so many of us. To attack mental illness as the scourge it is.

Last October CNN kicked off its "Facts First" ad campaign, created out of brand agency Figliulo & Partners, in which it showed an apple on-screen while an announcer talked about perception and spin:

This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana' over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple.

(Watch it here.) The ad was an obvious dig at the Trump administration, home of "alternative facts" and constant cries of "fake news" directed at news organizations including CNN. Now CNN is serving up a sequel (above) in which apple after apple is shown. Per the announcer:

Subway is adopting a slightly edgier vibe as it tries to bounce back from years of declining sales and negative headlines, rolling out a first commercial from its new Dentsu Aegis Network agency team that's risqu enough, at least, to require editing a curse word out of the song.

The sandwich chain needs to forge more of "an emotional connection" with its customers, says Chief Advertising Officer Chris Carroll.

"We're missing their daily consideration to come in our restaurants," he says.

Matthew McConaughey will no longer be driving solo as Lincoln's celebrity endorser. The Ford-owned luxury brand has added tennis superstar Serena Williams to its roster, just as the new mother hits the court again.

Williams and McConaughey won't be appearing together. Instead, Williams will be used solely on social media in a campaign breaking this week for the Navigator SUV. The effort, which includes videos declaring that "a champion always returns," is by Cycle, the content studio run by Laundry Service. The Wasserman-owned New York-based shop picked up the assignment late last year.

McConaughey has regularly appeared in Lincoln TV ads by the brand's lead agency, WPP's Hudson Rouge. Lincoln is banking on Williams to help it win over women, including mothers, as she makes her way back into competitive tennis less than seven months after the Sept. 1 birth of her daughter, Alexis Olympia.

Welcome to Ad Age's Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital-related news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for "Ad Age" under "Skills" in the Alexa app.

What people are talking about today

U.S. snowboarder Shaun White won three gold medals at the Winter Olympics, but he's also facing scrutiny about a sexual harassment allegation from his past, which was settled last year out of court last year. White was asked about the case at a news conference, and he responded, "honestly, I'm here to talk about the Olympics, not gossip." Then he promptly had to start apologizing for his "poor choice of words."

RGA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg runs an agency that's perhaps best known for its Nike innovations, the Owlet baby-monitor smart socks or the "Love Has No Labels" campaign for the Ad Council.

Now he's becoming the first ad pro to put on an exhibition at New York's Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where the guest curators are more often musicians, fashion designers, artists and writers. Greenberg's exhibit, which begins a six-month run on Feb. 23, showcases how design and technology have radically changed everyday life for decades.

But it's not that much of a detour for Greenberg, whose obsession with design and tech play out at work every day.

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To its fans, the name Aardman Animations instantly evokes the claymation antics of Wallace and Gromit. Or "Shaun the Sheep." Or "Chicken Run." This weekend the Bristol-based studio is releasing its seventh feature film in the U.S.it's already out in the U.K. "Early Man" stars a small Stone Age tribe at the onset of the Bronze Age. Technology, it turns out, has been disrupting us since time immemorial.

But the entertainment content for which the studio is so well known and loved constitutes only about 30 percent of its output. The rest of the breakdown includes roughly 30 percent TV and 30 percent branded content. Heather Wright, an executive producer and head of partner content at the studio, works with brands on storytelling in a wide array of media, not just claymation but AR and VR for clients including Google and the BBC.

A certain subset of the media world was stunned yesterday when Jarrod Dicker, the vice president of innovation and commercial strategy at The Washington Post, said he was packing it in after about two years to become the CEO of something called Po.et. According to its website, Po.et is "an open, universal, and immutable ledger for managing the ownership and licensing of the world's creative works." It runs on the blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin.

That Dicker, one of the media industry's leading engineers and creative strategists, would leave one of the world's top newspapers while on a winning streak got people's attention. The media model is broken, he says, shocking no one. If he were to build it from the ground up, Po.et is what it might look like.

Confused? He can explain it a lot better than we can. Our conversation has been edited.

It remains to be seen just how much the Pepsi brand will be woven into the script, but a new preview offers some clues, such as a Pepsi sign at an outdoor basketball tournament.

The Uncle Drew campaign, which cast Irving as an old man who can seriously hoop, debuted in 2012 as a five-minute online video promoting Pepsi Max. As reported early last year, PepsiCo's Creators League studio has been working with Temple Hill Entertainment to get the character on the big screen. Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment is also involved.